


Lessons

by faithlessone



Series: Stormheart - (M!Trevelyan/Cassandra) [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Self-defence lessons, for the squishy mage, some more soft, this time with punching!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24557059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithlessone/pseuds/faithlessone
Summary: Trevelyan is well aware of how defenceless he is without his magic. He asks Cassandra for some hand to hand lessons, but doesn't think his request the whole way through...
Relationships: Cassandra Pentaghast/Male Trevelyan, Male Inquisitor/Cassandra Pentaghast
Series: Stormheart - (M!Trevelyan/Cassandra) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756030
Comments: 11
Kudos: 26





	Lessons

He spends a good hour building up the courage to ask.

Physical exertion has never been his strongest suit. Over the months as the Herald, he’s been forced to grow used to the long marches and hikes that it takes to get from place to place, a far cry from his quiet years in the Circle, where the longest walk he ever had to take were the stairs to the astronomy tower. But anything that requires co-ordination is still a different story.

Practical magic was one of his few downfalls in the Circle: learning the correct hand gestures and arm movements to make his spells. They had to be trained into him with many, many hours of practice. It’s the only form of self-defence he has. He’s fully aware that he is more of a liability on the battlefield than a benefit, and if it weren’t for the glowing green mark on his hand, he’s convinced that his companions would never let him leave camp.

Then again, if he didn’t have the glowing green mark on his hand, he would never have actually joined the Inquisition in the first place.

He gives himself a shake, both mental and physical, and pushes away from the wall where he’s been leaning, watching Cassandra help Cullen drill the recruits. Their practice seems to be coming to an end. Perfect time to ask.

Cassandra splits off from the group as soon as Cullen dismisses them, rolling her shoulders and stretching. He wanders across the training area in her direction, his courage already beginning to flag. Somehow charging into a fade rift is so much easier than asking a favour.

Just before he reaches her, she bends down, propping her sword and shield against a convenient crate, and retrieving a water-skin. He manages to trip over his own feet when, rather than raising it to her lips as he’s expecting, she sprays the liquid all over her face, head tipped back.

“Herald?” she asks a moment later, regarding him on the grass with a slightly confused expression.

He scrambles back to his feet, trying not to look as mortified as he feels. “Yes?”

“Did you want something?”

Almost unconsciously, he runs his hand through his already dishevelled hair, realising with a start that, in all his time watching her practice, he hadn’t quite figured out how to ask her. “I was wondering, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, to… well… If you wouldn’t mind, giving me some… lessons?”

Her expression is both suspicious and irritated. It’s not an unusual sight.

“Lessons in what?”

Void, he is messing this up.

“Hand to hand? Perhaps the use of a dagger or short sword?”

She _laughs_.

A full-bodied rumble of laughter, the likes of which he doesn’t think he’s ever heard from her in all their weeks of travelling together.

His fight or flight instinct, which is, to be honest with himself, usually set on flight anyway, burns at him to run. Run far away. Hide. Possibly in those mysterious cells under the chantry that he and Sera had found the previous week.

When she recovers, however, he’s still frozen in place.

“You are _serious_?” she asks, confused and still a little suspicious.

He nods, sheepishly. “I know I’m almost completely useless out there. Eventually someone’s going to notice, or I’ll run out of mana at an inconvenient moment, and I won’t even be able to... I should… I should know how to… well. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

Her eyes narrow a little further, as if trying to look into his very soul.

“You are not useless.”

He raises an eyebrow, and she makes one of her disgusted noises in response.

“You are not _completely_ useless,” she amends. “But if you are serious, meet me here at dawn tomorrow. I will put you through your paces. See what you have to work with.”

He can’t help but grin. “Thank you, Cassandra, I promise, I’ll be here.”

*

True to his word, he is in front of the tent she has claimed before the sun has even started to cross the horizon. There are a few scouts and runners up and around, a lone Chantry sister disappearing into one of the cabins with a basketful of bread, but other than that, the world seems quiet and still. Peaceful, in a way that it so rarely is during the day.

She doesn’t seem _pleased_ to see him. Not that he was really expecting she would be. He half-believes that she thought he was joking. That said, she doesn’t immediately turn around and head back inside, so he’ll count it as a victory.

“What experience do you have?” she asks, her voice flat, regarding him in a much more detailed way than she ever has before. (To his knowledge, at least.)

“Just what the Circle taught me, and a few extra bits I’ve picked up from Solas and Madame de Fer,” he admits. “Magic. And even that was mostly theoretical until I came here. I was never supposed to be a battlemage. You’ve seen the breadth of my experience on the field already.”

Her mouth twists in a slightly disappointed fashion.

“No extra-curricular brawling?”

He shakes his head.

“No use of a knife?”

“Unless we’re talking as cutlery, no.”

She makes a small disgusted noise, and then squares up to him. “Hit me.”

His eyes widen without his permission. “What?”

She raises an eyebrow. “You have never even thrown a punch, have you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

She grumbles again, and shrugs her shoulders. “Hit. Me.”

There are few things he would like to do less, if he’s honest. He hadn’t thought about the training nearly well enough before he asked for _her_ help. Of course she would want to test his skills. Dimly, he wonders if it’s too late to ask Cullen instead.

However, faint heart never won fair lady, as they said in all those chivalric stories his sister used to read to him as a child before the Circle, so he curls his left hand into a fist and lifts it, hesitating an extra second before jabbing somewhere around her left shoulder. She brushes him aside with her forearm without flinching, her eyes narrowing again.

“Again. Harder. Faster.”

He tries a second time, and she brushes him off again.

“Show me your hands.”

Instinctively, he raises them both, in a gesture of surrender. Judging by her expression – a familiar mixture of irritation and tolerance – it isn’t the right decision. Hesitantly, he curls them both into fists.

“Thumb outside.”

He doesn’t obey immediately, and she reaches out, prying his hands open and resettling them to her preference. It feels less natural, but she’s the expert. He notes that she’s more delicate with his left hand, the one bearing the mark. It tingles a little more as she touches it, but whether that’s from the contact, or the adrenaline coursing through his body, he’s not sure.

Maker, the feeling of her hands on his is something he hadn’t actually realised how much he craved to feel again. Luckily, she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Now, show me a punch.”

She gestures to the open air now in front of him. He feels like an idiot, boxing at nothing, but he follows her order.

“Wrist straight.” She adjusts it for him, and he tries not to shudder at the contact. “Again.”

He keeps going for what seems like an hour, and probably isn’t much more than a quarter of that. She corrects his form a few more times; tilting his hands and arms, squaring his shoulders, adjusting his feet. Even in the comparative cold of the mountains, sweat begins to build at the back of his neck. No wonder the recruits are always so hot and tired.

Finally, she calls a halt to his shadow boxing. Just for the tiniest moment, he thinks she’s calling a halt to the whole practice, but instead she leads him over to a different corner of the practice field. Recruits are starting to congregate in the main area, half-awake and stretching ready for the morning drills. They pay little attention to him, and he’s glad.

Once they’re in front of a small group of large sacks, stuffed with straw and sawdust, Cassandra gestures to him to put his hands out again, pulling some cloth out of one of the pouches on her belt. Confident of his form now, he makes fists, thumbs out and wrists straight. She grumbles at him, and he freezes in place.

“Flat,” she says, shaking out the cloth and reaching for him.

Void take him, he thinks, as he realises what the cloth is. He lets her wrap one piece around each hand, over and over again. More careful with the left, again. Though he’s trying, very hard, to concentrate on learning the pattern so that next time – if there is a next time – he’s able to do it himself, he can’t help but be a little distracted by the sensation.

“Comfortable?” she asks.

He flexes his hands a few times, curling them into fists and then straightening them out again, rotating them too, to check the range of motion. When he’s done, he nods, and just for a fraction of a second, he sees something in her eyes that could be… approval? Impossible to be sure.

“Punch the bag.”

For some reason, though he had become comfortable with the shadow-boxing, the idea of punching what looks like a fairly solid sack makes him hesitate again.

“Punch the bag,” she repeats.

He doesn’t want to test her patience any further than he already has, so he obeys, landing the punch in the centre of the sack. And another, and another; right then left, then doubling, right right, left left; over and over again, the way she’s taught him, until she tuts at him again.

“Try from the shoulder, not the elbow. Aim _through_ your target.”

It’s a slightly… confusing instruction. If he wants to hit the _bag_ , why should he aim beyond it? Nevertheless, he obeys, imagining a point a foot or so behind the bag. Closing his eyes to help the visualisation, he throws a heavy punch…

… and feels pain splinter through his whole arm.

Letting out a slightly undignified yelp of pain, he cradles the injured fist to his chest.

“Hand.”

He holds it out to her with a slight air of embarrassment, and she examines it with a cold, professional touch, that, nonetheless, makes his traitorous heart beat a little faster.

“It is not broken. Only bruised.” Then, after a beat. “It was a good strike.”

There is a certain, grudging appreciation in her eyes, and he can’t help but smile at her, despite the pain.

“Ice it. That is enough for today. I must attend to drills. If you are amenable, meet me again tomorrow.”

She doesn’t wait for him to respond, simply turning on her heel and striding away across the practice field. He watches her go, trying not to let his eyes linger on her.

Not _too_ obviously, at least.

*

He’s standing in front of her tent once again before the sun rises the following morning. Thanks to a little spot of self-healing, and a judicious application of ice magic, his hand is entirely back to normal. He has the hand wraps already on in anticipation, ready for more training.

She still seems a little surprised to see him, when she emerges a half-hour or so later. As if a touch of pain would stop him doing something.

(Void, if pain stopped him doing _anything_ , he’d have run away from Haven and the Breach the first time he had to close a rift!)

“Ready?” he asks, keeping his voice light.

She makes a small, exasperated noise at him, and then reaches for his hands, adjusting the wrap a little on his left hand, and then entirely unravelling and re-doing the one on his right. He waits patiently, watching her more carefully. He’ll have to practice later.

“The bag again?” he asks.

Instead of answering, she just turns and begins to walk in that direction.

“You know, I can practise on my own if you have something else to do?”

Looking at her closely as they approach the corner of the practice field, he can see dark shadows under her eyes. The usual war table meetings hadn’t gone on particularly late the previous night, so she must have just slept badly. He feels terrible for dragging her out of bed.

“Seriously, Cassandra, you don’t have to be here if you don’t want to be. We could train later? Or tomorrow?”

She grumbles at him a little more, and then wraps her own hands and picks up something that looks like someone has covered a small shield in a few layers of thick quilting.

“Punch me,” she says, her voice a little rougher than it usually is.

If he hadn’t wanted to hit her yesterday, it’s nothing compared to how much he _really_ doesn’t want to hit her today.

He delays a few seconds too long, though, because she bites back with, “punch me, Trevelyan, or I will punch you.”

A _really_ bad night, then.

(He doesn’t think he’s seen her this grouchy since the situation with Mother Giselle, Iron Bull, the elfroot, and Sera’s bees.)

Nothing for it, he thinks, putting up his fists, carefully remembering the way she had taught him, and throwing a swift jab towards her. She catches it on the shield, absorbing the blow. It’s a just a touch more yielding than the sandbag was, but a damn sight more scary too.

“Again,” she commands.

He carries on for a few more, trying out the jabs and crosses she’d coached him through the previous day. Aiming for the shield each time as she moves it from side to side, up and down.

Even though his heart is racing a little, both from the exercise and the close contact, he starts to feel more relaxed. More comfortable in his skin, in a way he never is unless he’s right in the middle of casting a spell. He tries moving his feet, twisting around her slightly so she has to shift around with him in a tight little circle to catch his fist. As he feels even more confident about it, he starts varying his hands too: not just the rhythms she’d taught him, but whatever feels good.

He looks up at her face after a particularly fun combination of two quick rights and then a more powerful left that had her stepping quickly back to keep the space between them, and catches her smiling at him. Just for a fraction of a second before she schools her expression again, but he can’t help but grin. The shadows under her eyes seem just a little fainter.

After another few minutes, she calls a halt, grabbing her waterskin and swigging from it, wiping a hand across her forehead. He follows suit, shaking out his arms too. It’s almost an entirely different muscle set to the one he usually uses, and he aches in places he didn’t know _could_ ache, but he doesn’t want to stop.

“Do you have to go to drills now?” he asks, trying not to sound forlorn.

She casts her gaze over her shoulder, to where Cullen and a couple of his lieutenants are arranging the recruits into neat lines. They don’t seem to be suffering for her absence, but he doesn’t want to be selfish. Training him in boxing isn’t exactly in her job description.

When she looks back at him, it’s with a tilted head and a slightly inquisitive expression.

“I’m not joining them,” he says, cutting her off before she can voice the thought. “It’s bad enough that I’m useless at a distance. Putting me up against even Cullen’s greenest farm-kids and merchants’ children will have them lose any speck of faith in me.”

Something resembling a smirk plays around her lips for a moment.

“I was not going to suggest it.”

Oh.

Void.

“I was simply going to ask if you wanted to step your training up a notch.”

Oh?

He gives her a grin that’s part pride and part curiosity. “Swords?”

She laughs, though not as uproariously as she had done the first time he asked, thank the Maker.

“Certainly not. I will not be responsible for you cutting your arm off. But if you’re going to know how to throw a punch, you should also know how to _take_ one.”

Maker.

He’d hoped she’d got over her earlier desire to punch him. She certainly looks a lot calmer and less… grumpy, than she did when she first emerged from her tent, but apparently not. Suddenly, he really regrets being dressed in only his everyday enchanter coat, without the layer of light armour he wears underneath when they are out on an expedition.

She seems to realise the disparity, quickly unlacing the breastplate she habitually wears under her surcoat, and laying it gently atop the sand bag. For a moment, it looks to him a little like the lid of a very unconventional teapot, and he squashes down the desire to laugh.

When he turns back, she has her fists up, in an easy, almost relaxed pose, light on the balls of her feet. He can’t remember the last time he was this scared, and yet this… excited.

Then she takes a fast, controlled swing at him, and everything heightens even further.

“You pulled that one,” he accuses casually, as it barely taps him in the shoulder.

“If I hadn’t, you’d be on the ground. Would you like a real one?” There’s a mischievous light to her eyes.

He has to take a sharp breath in as it feels like all the oxygen has evaporated from his body, but he manages to shake his head and lift his fists in response instead.

She taps him again, on the side of his ribs this time.

“Shouldn’t you be teaching me how to block these?” he asks.

The light grows a little brighter. “Just do what feels natural, Trevelyan. I will correct you if you are wrong.”

For the smallest fraction of a second, he thinks of a certain Senior Enchanter at the Ostwick Circle, who had frequently ‘corrected’ his spell gestures by shooting small bolts of ice down the neck of Brennan’s robes when he got them wrong, and is glad that Cassandra doesn’t have that ability.

Then she lands a slightly firmer punch to the centre of his chest, all but knocking the wind out of him, and he remembers that ice would be the least of his worries.

“You can try and hit me back, you know,” she suggests, and that mischievous light has spread into a slight smirk playing around her lips.

“Oh I can, can I?” He chases his words with a quick one-two combination, both of which she blocks.

“You can _try_ ,” she echoes, a little sing-song, her voice bright.

They continue trading blows, both physical and verbal, until he is starting to pant, damp with sweat. She still looks almost irritatingly fresh, but that’s only to be expected. He’s certain that if he had to wear her heavy armour for a couple of hours, he wouldn’t be able to lift his own legs, let alone a sword and shield.

Luckily, he _is_ progressing. He manages to block a few of her punches, and land one or two of his own. (Even if he is completely certain that she let him do it.)

In fact, he’d dare to say that everything is going along almost _swimmingly_ , until two things happen, in very quick succession.

Firstly, someone wolf-whistles loudly at them.

Secondly, he accidentally punches her right in the face.

The recruit who had made that stupid noise is clearly not as mind-blastingly senseless as he first appeared to be, because he takes off at a _sprint_ almost as soon as the blow lands. The little cluster of others, who had gathered during a break in their own morning drills to watch their Herald and the Seeker sparring, exchange a few nervous glances and then scarper likewise.

For his own part, Brennan holds up his hands in surrender, letting loose a stream of apologies as Cassandra clutches at her nose.

“Maker, Cassandra, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! I thought you were going to block… and well, Maker, I shouldn’t have hit you in the… what can I do? Are you injured? Did I hurt you?”

She narrows her eyes at him for a moment, and then releases her hands from her face, showing him the bleeding mess that is her clearly broken nose.

He’s rendered speechless, and then takes a deep breath, ready to fall to his knees in supplication if it looks like she wants to take her revenge in kind. But then…

“Well, _heal_ me, for goodness’ sake,” she says, her voice thick.

Void.

He’d actually entirely forgotten that that was an option.

Quickly, he steps forward. This was somehow so much easier when she was unconscious. She closes her eyes, arms dropping to her side as he grabs his own waterskin from his belt and carefully cleans the blood from her nose and lips. Then he reaches for her, gently framing her face with both hands.

Carefully, he visualises his familiar golden threads, sewing up the injured area; sunlight reshaping her nose and chasing away the bruises that are already forming beneath the skin.

When he’s done (having also cleared up the headache she had lingering behind her eyes and the bruise on her shoulder which he doesn’t _think_ he caused, but is close enough to one of his rare landed punches that it’s only polite), he opens his eyes, to find her staring at him, with an expression he cannot hope to understand.

“All done,” he says, somewhat redundantly, stepping back.

The tips of his fingers are tingling where they were pressed against her face, and, given that the last time he did this he passed out before he got to this point, he’s not sure if that’s entirely normal or not. It doesn’t happen when he heals himself, but that’s quite a different circumstance.

After a long, long moment, she reaches up, delicately prodding at her nose and cheekbones before acknowledging him.

“Thank you.”

He can’t help ducking his head, certain that a flush has spread across his cheeks at the gratitude. As if it weren’t entirely his fault to begin with.

“I think that is enough for today,” she adds, though she sounds a little… disappointed about it.

“Probably for the best,” he agrees. “Do you want me to, uh, talk to Cullen about the… audience?”

She casts a glance over to where the recruits are back in training, doing one of Cullen’s favourite shield manoeuvres over and over again. Her shoulders fall, just the slightest bit. If he hadn’t been looking straight at her, he doesn’t think he could have told that anything was different.

“Best not,” she says, looking back at him. Her eyes narrow dangerously. “I will run a drill of my own tomorrow morning. Early. They will not enjoy it.”

“Tomorrow morning?” he echoes, his turn to be a little disappointed.

“Do not think I have finished with you, Trevelyan,” she promises him, an eyebrow raised. “I expect you to do some more practice by yourself, and we will spar again the day after. That was a lucky shot, but you cannot always rely on your opponent being…”

“Distracted?” he offers when she tails off.

“Quite so.”

He grins widely at her, receiving a small, tight, but unmistakable, smile in return.

“One day, I’ll be able to land one without you letting me, or getting distracted.”

She lets out a disgusted yet somehow fond noise, rolling her eyes a little.

“I have faith that you will. But only if you practice.”

He feigns a serious expression, nodding. “Practice, of course.”

Another disgusted noise, and then she turns on her heel, striding away towards her tent.

“Till the day after tomorrow?” he shouts after her.

“I will see you at the war table this afternoon, Trevelyan,” she calls back. The ‘you idiot’ only strongly implied.

He lets himself grin again, and then stretches out his arms and turns to the sandbags. If he wants to best her for real, he really ought to start practising now…

**Author's Note:**

> (Indirectly inspired by my teenage experience at my one and only kung fu lesson, in which I accidentally broke a cute guy's nose. I was too embarrassed to ever go back. Sadly, I did not have Brennan's healing magic!)


End file.
